there's been some mistake

             at my psychic birthday party

tarot cards      spread outward

                                                 like delinquents

                                                 lying about
     how I "made them do it"

                      and              
                        even though
                                          it's     not me   it's

           socio-economic factors etc. etc.,

I get sent to the office.

the office is empty.        
surprise!

   the PTA want me         to be         the principal.

              but        
         all those           kids!
(are        assholes!)

              and anyway I'm too young.

                                                          right??

             if you google my age
             a  lot of the results are porn,

             so                that makes me an adult
             I guess. 

                                but I also still wear
                                hooded jumpers
                                                                 a lot.

             so I turn down the job,

shuffle and deal again.

Turn Around

my response to your shrinking lights

was a vehicular jolt

and film criminal instinct

for a high speed chase.

but you turned around smiling,

and i think 

i'd die sad otherwise,

in a forty-two car pile up

miles from home.

you pull me over 

like a woollen blanket now

and your world is a bed

that i want to wake up in forever. 

when old people stare

i just want to kiss you,

and for someone to play The Beatles

"Do It In The Road" over phone speakers,

but not in a fucked up way

like usual.

like last week,

i would have smashed that guy's windscreen

and his headlights

to make him apologise.

but instead i turned around smiling,
because i think 

i'd die sad otherwise,

in a forty-two car pile up

miles from you.

Spam Poem

Enjoy night potency,
Intimate like a god of love
who parts from
the loaded summits
of national theory
to overview a suburban
deportation Progress.

The struggle manager of individual folk
pouching continental Europe
with the antimilitarist storyline.
Hocking The Caribbean for
Federal increases in
Earl soccer.

Season

In summer

I am sandwiched

between sweetnesses of incongruous flavour.

These girls are wholesome and seductive.

They clash, they clash,

I am macaruined.

Hard Sell

sure, there are flaws

in the market system.

but in a pastoral utopia,

could you cure famine

just by moisturising?

Oh Buoy

moments of civilisation
peek out of the sand

and mental maps amend
for makeshift paths of
flattened grass

take note of
patterned shell arrangements,
weathered glass,

the coals of teenage experience
and picnic relics:

paper plates and
olive pips
schnitzeled
in mammal ancestors

six hundred million

generations past.

a wave peeks back
and curls into the shore
like a century,
pushing on the corners
of everything -

oh buoy,
it’s effortless.

imaging an ex/girl/friend.

so now that we've ended the experiment
of our trial unseparation,
we could go to a gallery?
sure sure sure sure sure...
but, will you come as yourself,
or the personified domestic prop i dream about now.
i'm making out with a cd rack
at our old house party, all our friends
are there and are thinking, what the fuck?
but, they don't realise the cd rack
is you.
so you're clear, the party was pretty hoppin' (we had snakelights);
i could've made out with a lot of other, actual people.
i guess this is love.
but in my waking clarity, you were kind of brittle,
and, while perspicacity is afforded,
maybe this new break is for the best.
now i can finally get a tan,
without your tall concert-comfort limbs
fucking up the UV.
now my lungs can regenerate, while you
smoke yours dry enough that i can
see right through and know that
in there it's still 2009 for us.
and that's how it should stay,
i guess.
so, sure sure sure, we can go look at artefacts -
rouse the past passions of others,
contemplate a still-born avant-garde
and forget that this was a lot like
our first date.
we can look at the works and not our feet this time.
we can circle the podiums
in some kind of symbolic denial
of our own buried chests,
and toast to your art-world success.

always be strudel yourself

where in the name of god did a month go? vaguely: kicking uni, working, melblobs. more specifically: writing, guitar, repairing, despairing, introspecting, coffee, parties, dance offs, farewells, art, books, markets, ideas, exes, zines. the usual, i guess.

grove expectations 3 tonight. i read this:


I sit outside this shit so i guess that makes me a legend.

from where i sit it seems
that people stand on maps and fret
that they will trip down cliffs or streams
if they're not careful where they step

so they always stick to the marked paths,
the paved driveways and backyards.

and yet the paper rips, it tears
and folds beneath the safest lines
creating contours where the worried
walked before a thousand times -

these hordes gingerly tread their own trenches,
then turn around with, "see, the landscape is dangerous."

BAH.

if i could be bothered to get up i'd say, "smooth down your paper valleys! this place is just a map which is really just a coloured mat - and if you take off your shoes,
we can even play twister!"

but they probably wouldn't listen.

for friends, near and far

we should forever remember
we breathed each other in
these living rooms. we've
dreamed, slept, speculated
on all the couch blankets
during day spoons. we've
worn all my garish jackets,
drunk from all the glasses
and healed our wounds. we've
been we'ved, and not even
latitudinal dissimilarity
could slacken the loom.
if you ever need me to,
i will hug you home. because
i could never forget that
your arms are where i'm from.


sappy. yeah. i fucking love you guys, deal with it! also, it was Risky B who said "hug each other home", and Cas and i were overwhelmed with love for it.

Around the traps.

How long can I stay here inside
hooked up to this
hydroponic equipment?
The net has turned me into a spy
fat on truth’s
patchwork banquet.
It’s spun so I don’t have to hunt, I just wait
(stories fix everything
in place.)
So I’m sure reality’s probably great,
But you must see why
I’d rather stay here.



poem on how i feel about the internet sometimes.

home is wherever i'm with you

so, apparently this song "home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is pretty well known. i've been listening to the album today, it's pretty well great. driving, folky, somehow neon-bibly. i don't even care that it's a dude singing.
see, i'm trying to listen to a new album a day, read a new book at least every week, see a play at least every month, and write a novel by December 31st. it would be nice to pass my subjects as well. go for goals.

also, here's a poem about clark park (in milson's point).



centrifuge

i watch the day close
from the middle of the universe,
on a park bench.
cat power is singing
bob dylan songs
sweetly into the moment,
as i think old-timey things
and gaze out at the deepening blue.
sailing boats with bows oceanbound
sway impatiently;
a harboured armada of
northshore escapist fantasies
fleet like moments,
'let's go let's go let's go!'
they say,
'you moneyed freaks, let's sail!'
and oh god, you guys,
sometimes i'd die to get out of this
yuppie Sydney flatness,
this naive Ken Done placemat.
but i am tide
and
the curvature of the earth
always brings my head back here
where i can breathe,
love,
watch older lesbians jog
around flowerbeds
and be amazed at how
the shadows of palms behind me
stretch and merge into night.

Enjoy.

I am lacking
Ambition.
I am lacking
My capitalist fist;
These palms are skyward
Like handsets for reception.
I am shapeless,
Wandering, pondering
Plundering
Naively,
Squandering privileges
In the city of villages;
The town of iniquity,
Drunks,
And fun times.
I spend my days
Into debt.
I laugh at luck,
I flip a double headed coin.
People-collages and reckless joy
Defy my endless limerick schedules;
Five line dot point yearnings for a life
More structured
And simple.
Oh my days,
Have I transcended the stress already?
Or did I learn to live
Off a coke ad?





Sometimes i worry that we're all trapped in it, no matter the mountains we climb.
/end pessimism.

The Scene

Anxious club-eyes,
Dance with me,
You behave so
Heterosexually
Smiling, writhing
Drunkenly,
Oh baby how I want your
Docile body

We could get married,
We could get mortgaged
I have names
For our three kids.
Won’t you let me caress
Your soft hope chest,
Oh how I love your
Docile body





so maybe i read some Foucault.

"we bet you just can't wait to catch this highly anticipated big-screen lesbian kiss"


grove expectations (poetry night) at cas's last night. got there early after zero hours of sleep the night before, boltanski'd her bannister and drank some mulled wine. that place is so warming, our world in there is beautiful. kind of like my new wife, megan washington (i may have watched her videos and died of love, a little). these things make me miss jen.

we read some poetry, in a special reading chair. spotlight and all, with an isosceles fairylight crown. i read one by this guy, and also read an old one of mine. i've had this other poem lurking around for ages, i thought about reading it, didn't. this is it:

we woke up in the park last week,
leaves in my hair, grass on my cheek.
searching for bruises i felt should be there,
i was cursing my body for failing to bear

our purple indiscretions in flesh

so that others might notice, make mention
of these marks, and of this embodied tension,
discuss and speculate on our night's lesson
(that somehow never lessened the question;

is it actually me you want?)

but i won't tell if you won't, it's just us
and yeah, you're right, it's just lust.
it's just cost trust and lost love,
we both got drunk and forgot who i was

so you should know that i don't blame you

but can you just
admit that it's
fucked.


m, i don't know, there's still a fifteen year old emoet in there.

also, later, poems from this guy:

... and others.

things have been strange of late,
i'm burning through the weeks.
though last night was a fantastic reminder that i can do things. sometimes, i feel as though we have such incredibly important fun. it is perfect and essential.

have i ever told you that i love you?

so, ALSO, things are ok, on the whole. for me. although, almost everything is spectacularly unfathomable to me these days; i am way too distracted by life-detail. ah i'd like to have you all over here in my head some time, whenever you forget that pine nuts and batteries are incomprehensibly miraculous.
mostly, today, girls amaze me.

working on the music for tomorrow night. it's going to be seriously AMAZING.

Teenage Feelings


1. Fear

I get scared of famous people

The same way as I get scared
of hell;

When I’m worried it’s real.


2. Love

We chose who we’d die for
When each breath
was need.

And it took a year,
Darling

But they watched your terry cloth mouth
Swallow death
and me.



Teenage Dreams

There are things I want to tell you:

Everything about you is sexy,

And in my American teen dream
We get together at prom.

(Please remember this
as a role play possibility
if we get married.)

games

i still remember your tall corduroy walk
your yawning laughs at after thoughts
god if you'd only wear your acid wash
we could go back to where we left off

because in the meantime, i am worn out by non-love. threadbare, a little, stripped. and probably still willfully nihilistic, because it means there's less to get over.

but oh, her.
with perfect teeth and torso
quick wit attractive more so.

i simply must
forget her magazine's made honest, forward,
and my tyrant heart's made chased and awkward

yet i'm so unappealed by the un-games that last night i dreamed we were the last two living. killer machines were on our cavestep, but you were enigmatically aloof. i rolled you a cigarette and we watched TV nervously outdoors, you loved me but you wouldn't ever show it. oh wow, aloof dream shorty, you looked like marion cotillard.
that CHEST.
what incredible sexy fun!

I
Just
Want
To draw
You
To draw
You
Out
To draw
You
Out
Of this
Sick
Dream.

We had a rule. Attack,
Attack, back.
Fighting kept us suspended,
A pen over an ending,
A sentence refusing sense,
A court without law.

But you used rhythm against me
After you won words in that poker hand
And all I won were those naked photos.
You turned our fights into rhymes,
You turned your life into moments,
Weak and final.

I wanted infinity and you
Needed an apocalypse
To feel time. But
How can continuity compete,
With something so complete
As a fucking line?

Dada Spam Poem no. 3

Screw her every hole,
Cause I don’t see any changes happening
Said the Quangle Wangle Quee,
And her tears began to flow.

Try it for good luck,
They’ve killed everybody,
Wailed nicholas
in a kinder voice.

In their turn the people sent messengers to the palace;
About your college diploma,
It’s one old jug without a handle
Except now you’re four years older than me

But the Frog and the Fimble Fowl
Ventured upstairs
For the owner of the castle
Swam across the Bristol Channel.